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REFF AR Youth Program is a special program of Education & Learning enacted by REFF to ensure the immediate distribution of its Augmented Rreality Drug to young generations.

The Program consists in a series of theoretical and practical workshops exploring the possibilities offered by fake, remix, recontextualization, plagiarism and reenactment as a tool for methodological reinvention of reality. During the workshops open source platforms as MACME and Bluetooth War are introduced to participants and installed on their machines.

REFF AR Youth Program was lunched in London as a part of the exhibit "Remix the World! Reinvent reality!" (Fourtherfield Gallery, 25th Feb - 26th Mar 2011). The agenda of the Fake Institution inspired approval and enthusiasm in the academic world. In the two weeks prior to the exhibition six different universities in London ware more than happy to guest REFF workshops and presentations. And more: the Program arrived directly to students movements, faithing against cuts in culture.

“REFF is an Augmented Reality (AR) Drug. Also referred to as Simulata Realitas per Activam-Industriosam-Laboriosam Multiplicationem, REFF AR Drug is a psychotropic antidepressant administered cross-medially.This drug is used to treat social depression, fear of the future, precariety, anthropological distress, lack of opportunities, communicational totalitarianism, scarcity of freedoms and intolerant social ecosystems.Compared to other drugs acting on the same areas, REFF AR Drug is designed with accessibility in mind and as an enabler of the spontaneous generation of forms of expression and of collaborative practices.

REFF AR Drug is also used (off-label) to treat numerous other conditions such as the UFPS (Uncertainty for the Future of Publishing Syndrome), and the LDSBMS (Lack of Decent Sustainable Business Models Syndrome).”

MACME (Multi Author Medial Cross Ecosystem), is an open source platform that transforms a WordPress blog into a system of cross-media publishing. MACME has been issued as a giant WordPress plugin, distributed through GPL3 license. Thanks to MACME, anyone can produce their own cross-media publication and distribute it individually in augmented reality as a website, e-book, mobile phone application (for iPhone, iPad and coming soon for Android).

REFF – Romaeuropa FakeFactory is an act of artistic and technological hacking, a platform for global discussion and a performance that, beginning in 2009, has dealt with the themes of active, critical and creative innovation, confronting the management of cultural and technological policies related to these areas. The story begins with the opening of the Romaeuropa WebFactory, a digital art competition launched in 2008 by the Romaeuropa Foundation (Fondazione Romaeuropa) and Telecom Italia. Oppressive copyright conditions, such as the unilateral transfer of the rights to the works submitted and a ban on the use of techniques like mashup, cutup, remix but conversely giving the Romaeuropa Foundation and Telecom Italia the right to remix the works, inspired the creation of a Fake capable of becoming a point for multi-disciplinary analysis of the possibilities offered by freely available knowledge, contents and resources: a chance to reverse the logic of the competition and bring to light the contradictions, limits and implications of such a typical, reactionary cultural policy.

“Remix the world! Reinvent Reality!” is one of the principal themes that has inspired the REFF, from an act of détournement and cybersquatting – that brought to life the creation of a remix skills competition determining in 2009 a reversal of the Romaeuropa Foundation and Telecom Italia’s policy on the management of intellectual property rights – to the presentation of REFF’s instances and methodologies to the Cultural Commission of the Italian Senate (Commissione Cultura del Senato della Repubblica Italiana), up to the current production of the REFF book, as a global effort to create a working business model that implements the concepts and demands expressed by the RomaEuropa FakeFactory. Supporters of the REFF are found all over the world: over 80 partners among universities, artists, academies, associations, hackers, researchers, designers, journalists, politicians, magazines, networks, activitst, art critics, architects, musicians and entrepreneurs together with all the people who share a belief that art, design and new technologies can unite towards a critical, yet positive vision of a world that can create new opportunities and new ways of being, collaborating and communicating.